MANCHESTER, England — “From what I know Cuba won’t break so easily as Venezuela,” David Lawrence, a gateline ticket checker at Manchester Piccadilly rail station, told Hugo Wils. Wils is the Communist League candidate in the parliamentary by-election for the Gorton and Denton constituency here. Lawrence and Wils were discussing Washington’s stepped-up military threats against Cuba as Wils campaigned around the station Feb. 13.
“Working people in Cuba have a stake in the defense of their revolution,” Wils said, “and so do workers here. It’s an example that there’s an alternative to capitalist rule.”
Hussein Mohamed joined the discussion. He told Wils, “My people are under attack,” referring to immigration raids targeting Somalis in Minneapolis. Wils said that trade unions there had backed disciplined demonstrations for immigrant rights.
“Union support for immigrant workers in our fight for union recognition was important,” Mohamed said. He was part of a yearslong struggle by more than 150 rail workers employed by Carlisle Support Services who won recognition for the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union in 2024.
Wils spoke at a candidates debate Feb. 10, organized by Local Voices Gorton and Denton, and at another Feb. 12, organized by the Levenshulme Community Association. The meetings drew over 300 people.
“The U.S. government’s efforts to force other governments to stop supplying oil to Cuba is a war move,” Wils told both meetings. He explained that “the Communist League is the peace party,” because it’s the one party that points a road forward for workers to take power from the capitalist war makers and into our own hands.
At the Feb. 12 debate the candidates were asked about their response to the rise of antisemitism. Both Charlotte Cadden, the Conservative candidate, and Labour’s Angeliki Stoglia described antisemitism as a “hate crime.” Reform UK candidate Matthew Goodwin said it was “depressing” that “Jews were leaving Britain” in response to the rise in Jew-hating attacks.
A refuge from Jew-hatred, pogroms
Antisemitism “is not another ‘hate’ crime,” Wils said. Jews are targeted “by reactionary forces to blind working people from seeing our real enemy — the capitalist class. That’s been true from the times of the czarist empire to the Nazis, up to today. Working people have a big stake in defending Israel, the one country that unconditionally offers Jews a refuge.”
Candidates were asked if they agreed that there was “genocide” in Gaza today. The Liberal Democrats’ Jackie Pearcey and Green candidate Hannah Spencer both claimed Israel was carrying out “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Wils disagreed. “Who is responsible for the death and destruction in Gaza? It’s Hamas,” he said. “Their Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom, backed by the reactionary rulers in Iran, signaled its intention to carry out a new Holocaust.”
Candidates were also asked about a recent U.K. Supreme Court ruling that men and women are defined by their biological sex. The ruling means that same-sex services for women — from hospital wards, to women’s refuges and sports can exclude men who say they identify as women. The Green and Liberal Democrats candidates said they opposed the ruling.
Wils said the ruling defended “gains for all working people won as a result of the fight for women’s rights.” This is deeply tied to the fight “to win jobs for women and for separate changing rooms.”
After the debate some participants stayed around to tell Wils they’d appreciated his comments. One person got a copy of The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch: Stakes for the International Working Class.
Another debate earlier in the day was hosted by the Manchester Evening News, which excluded Wils from participating despite the fact he’ll be on the Feb. 26 ballot. Spencer from the Green Party told participants that the Labour government’s immigration restrictions were “terrifying,” and accused her opponents of “cozying up to Trump.” Goodwin from Reform UK lambasted authorities for allegedly allocating housing in the Denton area “to illegal immigrants” and said his party would “slash immigration.”
Wils spoke to this question in an interview with the Tameside Reporter.
“There’s a terrific housing crisis, especially in Manchester,” Wils said “That crisis is going to deepen, because we live under class rule. The government and the state are organised for the interests of big business, not working people.”
The CL calls for a government-funded mass “public works programme,” not “as a promise but a demand to fight for,” in order to provide jobs to build “the housing, schools, hospitals and roads that working people need,” Wils said. His campaign calls for an amnesty for all immigrants in the U.K. in order to unite working people and strengthen the labor movement.
Wils met Adeola Badmus when he campaigned near a Gorton market Feb. 14. They discussed the growing threat of more wars. Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer had announced the same day that London was deploying a naval fleet to join U.S. forces in the Arctic. Starmer declared that governments in Europe had “to be ready to fight.”
“The British rulers deployed their armed forces to assist Washington when it seized an oil tanker linked to Venezuela in the Atlantic,” Wils told Badmus. “This is another dangerous step on the road toward a world war.” He described how the British rulers had been complicit with the U.S. economic and political war against Cuba for decades.
“That’s because Cuba gave solidarity to countries in Africa and round the world,” Badmus said, pointing to the unparalleled contribution of Cuban international volunteers. “That’s the U.S.’s real problem.”
Several people came by the CL street table that day saying that they had already received Wils’ campaign material through their doors. The CL took advantage of a free mailing to get its program to 49,600 households in the constituency.